A minimum-security resident who escaped from the Wichita Work Release Facility was found dead Friday following a law enforcement search in southwest Wichita.

According to the Kansas Department of Corrections, 36-year-old Jauwon Allen walked away from the facility Thursday night. Investigators later received a tip that Allen may have been at a residence in southwest Wichita.

KDOC agents approached the home Friday and announced their presence before hearing a single gunshot from inside. Agents backed away, established a perimeter and requested assistance from Wichita police and the Sedgwick County Sheriff’s Office.

Law enforcement later entered the residence and found Allen alone and dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Authorities said no law enforcement officers fired their weapons or were injured.

KDOC and local law enforcement continue to investigate Allen’s escape and the circumstances surrounding his death.

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By Amanda Watford

Flock Safety is tightening privacy and oversight controls for its nationwide network of automated license plate readers as more communities pull back from the technology and lawmakers across the political spectrum push for new restrictions.

The company announced Thursday that it will recommend that police agencies retain license plate reader data for seven days, down from 30, while adding tools to restrict data sharing between agencies and detect potentially abusive searches. Flock also plans to require law enforcement users to associate searches with case codes and automatically suspend users whose activity is flagged as abnormal.

The changes come amid growing scrutiny of a surveillance network that Flock says has more than 120,000 cameras across 49 states and serves thousands of law enforcement agencies and communities.

The cameras photograph passing vehicles and record information including license plates, vehicle characteristics, location and time. Police can search the resulting data during investigations, sometimes across jurisdictional lines.

More than 50 agencies or communities have canceled, suspended or rejected a Flock contract or deactivated their cameras since the beginning of 2026, according to DeFlock, a grassroots group that tracks license plate reader deployments. Cameras have also been vandalized in communities around the country.

Recent incidents involving police officers accused of using Flock to track friends, relatives and romantic partners have added to concerns about how the data can be accessed and shared. The technology also has been criticized after inaccurate license plate information contributed to wrongful police stops, arrests and detentions.

Flock says the new measures will give communities greater control over their data while strengthening safeguards against misuse.

“These changes, like I said, are the next chapter of a long book I hope to write on how we build a better version of America that’s both safer, protects our privacy and holds those who have power accountable,” Flock Safety co-founder and CEO Garrett Langley said in a video statement.

But civil liberties advocates say some of the safeguards have been tried before and question whether the company’s changes address broader concerns about a system that can create a record of people’s movements even when they are not suspected of a crime.

States have taken different approaches to regulating technologies used in policing, including artificial intelligence, facial recognition, drones and automated license plate readers. More than a dozen states have enacted laws governing such technologies, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, but there is no consistent national framework for their use.

Strengthening privacy and accountability

Flock’s seven-day retention recommendation is one of its most significant changes.

When the company launched nine years ago, it set 30 days as the default recommendation, while allowing communities to choose shorter or longer periods.

For investigations that require older information, Flock is introducing “Evidence Mode,” which will allow detectives to preserve specific license plate data as evidence in an active case.

The change does not automatically apply to existing customers, which can keep their current retention policies. Communities also will continue to choose their own retention periods.

The American Civil Liberties Union called the shorter retention period a potential step forward but said its impact will depend on how the new mode works. In a statement, the group recommended a 48-hour retention period and warned that if searches cause data to be preserved, the new system could allow significant amounts of location information to remain available longer than seven days.

Flock also is giving communities more control over which outside agencies can search their cameras. Under the new “offense filtering” system, a community could allow another agency to search its cameras for specific crimes or offenses and block searches related to immigration enforcement, for example.

Flock also will require all law enforcement customers to adopt its audit assistance tool by the end of the year. The system looks for unusual search activity and flags it for administrator review. Flock plans to automatically suspend users whose activity meets certain criteria for abnormal behavior while their access is reviewed.

The company also will require case codes for law enforcement searches by the end of the year. Officers can bypass the requirement during emergencies, but those searches also will be flagged for review.

Police misuse and erroneous alerts

Flock’s new controls build on safeguards the company has introduced in recent years, including electronic audit logs and requirements that users provide a reason for searches.

The ACLU, in its statement, said some of those earlier safeguards were ineffective. The group pointed to cases in which officers circumvented search-purpose restrictions by entering vague or meaningless explanations before Flock replaced a free-text field with a list of approved search reasons.

The Washington Post reported earlier this month that nearly 50 police officers had been charged or accused of using Flock cameras for unauthorized purposes, many involving attempts to track current or former romantic partners or family members.

In Savannah, Georgia, four police officers and two civilian employees were fired last week after a department investigation found searches involving personal acquaintances and family members, according to a news release. The investigation also found that an officer had allowed an outside law enforcement agency to access Savannah’s Flock system.

The activity was identified using Flock’s audit assistance tool. All six cases were referred to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation for independent criminal investigations.

The technology has also drawn scrutiny when information in the system is inaccurate or outdated.

In Wisconsin, a woman was pulled over at gunpoint earlier this month after a Flock camera incorrectly flagged her vehicle as being involved in a homicide. Brookfield police stopped Amber Newell on Interstate 94 after receiving the alert, but Milwaukee police told officers they no longer needed the vehicle or its occupants. Newell was released.

Milwaukee police later said the incident was caused by an employee’s failure to remove an outdated wanted-vehicle alert from the Flock system, rather than an error by Flock itself. Newell said she had also been stopped at gunpoint earlier that week and was afraid to drive afterward.

In its announcement, Flock said its alerts are intended to be investigative leads rather than conclusions and that officers should visually confirm a vehicle’s license plate before taking action. The company said its system produces fewer than nine human-reported errors for every 1 million alerts.

Bipartisan interest

A bipartisan group of Pennsylvania lawmakers announced Monday that they plan to introduce legislation establishing statewide privacy and accountability requirements for automated license plate readers, including Flock cameras.

The proposal would establish rules governing access to the data, documented reasons for searches, audit trails, data retention and transparency. It also would create civil penalties for unauthorized access, use or disclosure and allow people harmed by misuse to bring civil suits.

“Technology that can help keep our communities safe should never become a tool for stalking or abuse,” Democratic state Rep. Jennifer O’Mara said in a statement announcing the proposal.

Republicans in Congress also have introduced or plan to introduce at least two proposals aimed at restricting automated surveillance technology. One would restrict federal agencies from purchasing or using certain automated surveillance technology, while the other would bar state and local police from using federal funds to acquire automated license plate reader systems.

Last month, 15 Democratic lawmakers in Michigan sent a letter to the state Department of Transportation to end an agreement allowing federal agencies, including U.S. Border Patrol and Homeland Security Investigations, to install surveillance technology on state property. The lawmakers argued that automated license plate readers infringe on residents’ constitutional rights.

The West Virginia House Democratic Caucus also released a statement last month opposing Flock cameras and said it is monitoring canceled contracts and lawsuits involving the technology.

Abandoning the technology

Some local governments are going further by ending their relationships with Flock altogether.

DeFlock’s tracker lists dozens of communities that have canceled contracts, deactivated cameras or rejected proposals since 2021.

More than 50 agencies or communities have taken one of those steps since the beginning of 2026.

Several communities in Rhode Island and Nebraska have acted this month, with city leaders voting to cancel contracts or uninstall cameras.

Earlier this month, the Burnet County Sheriff’s Office in Texas announced that it had removed all fixed Flock cameras after repeated vandalism damaged the equipment. The cameras were provided by the Heart of Texas Auto Theft Task Force, a multi-agency, multijurisdictional task force in Central Texas. The sheriff’s office has initiated criminal cases, but there are currently no suspects, according to a news release.

The debate over this technology is likely to continue through the rest of the year and into 2027, when more state legislatures return to session. That could bring additional proposals to regulate artificial intelligence tools used in policing, as well as how license plate reader data is collected, retained, shared and used.

Stateline reporter Amanda Watford can be reached at awatford@stateline.org.

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A Garnett daycare provider was arrested Thursday on allegations she abused two young children who were under her supervision, according to the Kansas Bureau of Investigation.

KBI agents arrested 28-year-old Tregon J. Guernsey around 2:45 p.m. on a warrant for two counts of abuse of a child, aggravated endangering a child and two counts of making false information. The Garnett Police Department assisted with the arrest.

Investigators allege Guernsey severely injured a 5-month-old infant in November 2025. During the investigation, agents discovered a separate incident from July 2024 in which Guernsey is accused of striking a 4-year-old child. The KBI said both children were under Guernsey’s supervision at her daycare when the alleged incidents occurred.

Guernsey was booked into the Anderson County Jail on a $500,000 bond.

The investigation remains ongoing, and the Anderson County Attorney is expected to prosecute the case.

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By Sherman Smith

TOPEKA — Phyllis Zorn, the reporter whose acts of journalism served as an excuse for the August 2023 police raid of the Marion County Record, will get $850,000 from the city of Marion to settle her federal lawsuit over the raid.

Attorneys for Zorn and the city filed a motion Tuesday, exactly three years after the raid, to dismiss the case. Kansas Reflector reviewed a copy of the settlement agreement, which has not been entered into the court record.

Zorn said her long national nightmare is over.

“I’ve always been a fairly private person,” Zorn said. “It’s been an uncomfortable situation for me to be in, where pieces of my life are out there. That took some serious getting used to.”

“They picked on the wrong people,” she added. “I think they thought they would get away with it because they’re some nothing little town in rural Kansas. But we were a newspaper. We have access to immediately draw the attention of the whole nation.”

Kansas Reflector broke the news of the August 2023 raid, which attracted international attention for its obvious violation of press freedom. Federal and state laws prohibit such raids on journalists because of the chilling effect of allowing authorities to review source materials and prevent news outlets from publishing unflattering stories.

Zorn previously received $600,000 from the county, which settled various lawsuits over the raid for a collective $3 million last fall. The city has not yet settled lawsuits filed by newspaper publisher Eric Meyer and former city Councilwoman Ruth Herbel. Former reporter Deb Gruver settled with the city in 2024 for $235,000.

Meyer said the settlements are a costly lesson for local leaders who tried to weaponize law enforcement against the newspaper.

“They proceeded at the encouragement of elected officials to trump up bogus charges they knew to be false, lied on warrant applications, tried to persuade others who normally review such things to look the other way, ignored advice from the KBI, and proudly set out to do the biggest raid ever in the history of Marion,” he said.

‘Small town bitchiness’

In Zorn’s case, U.S. District Judge Daniel Crabtree issued a preliminary ruling in March 2025 that said there was no reasonable basis for police to believe that Zorn or anyone at the newspaper had committed a crime.

The lawsuits by Zorn and others accused police and city leaders of retaliating for the newspaper’s aggressive coverage, including newspaper staff digging into accusations of Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody’s misconduct at his previous job with the Kansas City, Missouri, Police Department.

Zorn said a documentary about the raid — “Seized,” named for part of the headline the newspaper published after the raid — shows that many people in town were unhappy with the way Meyer wrote in the newspaper. The movie premiered in January at Sundance Film Festival and is expected to stream later this year on HBO Max.

Zorn said there were times she went into Meyer’s office after proofreading an article and said: “Don’t do this.”

“Sometimes he told me, ‘I wrote it that way because I wanted it that way,’ ” she said. “Other times, we changed it.”

Meyer said it was “a very open workplace,” and he also faulted her writing at times. People in town complained about everyone at the newspaper, he said, including Zorn.

“That’s life in a small town,” Meyer said. “As one of the reviewers of the documentary ‘Seized’ put it, ‘typically small-town bitchiness.’ ”

A week before the raid, Meyer and Zorn attempted to cover a public meeting with U.S. Rep. Jake LaTurner at a cafe owned by Kari Newell. Cody ejected the journalists at Newell’s request.

Coverage of the incident inspired resident Pam Maag, who was friends with Newell’s estranged husband, to send Zorn and Herbel a copy of Newell’s driving record. The record showed Newell, who was asking the city for a liquor license for her restaurant, had been driving with a suspended license for drunken driving.

Zorn verified the driving record through a public online database. Meyer then sent an email to local law enforcement saying they had obtained the information but were not planning to publish a story.

When Meyer showed Zorn the email, she asked if he had already sent it. He had.

“I thought, now we’re in for it,” she said. “We’re gonna get backwash, and we sure enough did.”

The raids

Cody, with the help of the sheriff’s office, responded to Meyer’s email by pursuing the bogus theory that Zorn had committed identity theft.

On Aug. 11, 2023, police raided the newspaper office, Meyer’s home and Herbel’s home. Meyer’s 98-year-old mother died a day after her profane squabble with officers who invaded the home where she lived with her son. Police seized journalists’ cellphones and reviewed material for unpublished stories, exceeding the scope of the warrants.

“The only thing any of us can do is stand up and just say no, even if it tosses us into expensive turmoil for years to come,” Meyer said. “That’s the price of living in a democracy when there are others who try to abuse their power.”

After the raids, Zorn suffered increasingly painful and frequent tonic-clonic seizures. She would lose consciousness and suffer muscle convulsions and lose bodily control. They are under control now, she said, but she is taking 2.5 times the medication she took before the raid.

“It was a farce,” Zorn said. “It was a farce that had unintended consequences. There were serious consequences for me. It has affected my health for, no doubt, the rest of my life.”

Jennifer Hill, an attorney for the city, declined to comment on the Zorn settlement or answer questions about ongoing litigation.

“We are progressing through discovery at this time,” Hill said. “The attorneys have taken depositions of some witnesses and continue to work through depositions of fact witnesses.”

Zorn retired from the newspaper and relocated elsewhere in Kansas after receiving her settlement from the county last fall. She said she bought a house, paid off some debts and invested the rest of the first settlement in stocks and bonds.

“This go-around,” she said, “I’m definitely going to do some of those things that I always wanted to do but had neither time nor money.”

She said she has no desire to travel overseas but would like to take a cruise on the Mississippi River.

Cody on trial

Randy Rathbun, a Wichita attorney, represented Zorn in her civil lawsuit against the city and county. He said he worked closely with law enforcement when he was the U.S. attorney for Kansas from 1993 to 1996.

“People now sometimes ask me, ‘Why are you suing law enforcement?’ And you know, it’s just cases like this where some people just lost their moral compass,” Rathbun said.

He said police knew Zorn hadn’t committed a crime.

Special prosecutors Marc Bennett, of Sedgwick County, and Barry Wilkerson, of Riley County, cleared Cody and other law enforcement officers of wrongdoing in carrying out the raids. But they charged Cody with misdemeanor obstruction for telling Newell after the raid to delete their text messages so people didn’t get the wrong idea about their relationship.

Cody, who stepped down as police chief a couple of months after the raids and moved to Hawaii, was scheduled to go on trial later this month, but the trial was postponed after his attorneys quit the case because of a broken relationship with their client.

Zorn said she was raised by a highway patrolman who became a small town police chief. She hopes the lawsuits send a clear message to law enforcement that you can’t raid a newspaper.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that the inside of my father’s casket lid is shredded because what they did was so wrong, and he would want to get to them and address what they did to his little girl,” Zorn said.

The veteran reporter paused to offer her advice for writing this story.

“That might make a good quote,” she offered.

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Five family members, including four children, were found dead Tuesday morning following a shooting at a Winfield home. The suspected gunman also died from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, according to the Kansas Bureau of Investigation.

Winfield police were called around 8:50 a.m. to a home in the 400 block of West Ninth Avenue. Police said 53-year-old Ronald Williams Sr. called dispatch and reported he had shot his family and intended to take his own life.

When officers arrived, they heard a single gunshot and established a perimeter. Officers entered the residence shortly before 11 a.m. and found six people with gunshot wounds. All six were pronounced dead at the scene.

The KBI identified the victims as 44-year-old Kelly L. George and four children, ranging in age from 3 to 9.

Investigators believe Williams was responsible for the deaths of George and the four children before calling 911. The KBI said Williams died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound shortly after law enforcement arrived.

The KBI and Winfield Police Department continue to investigate. No additional information is expected to be released at this time.

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A Johnson County woman has been sentenced after pleading guilty to insurance fraud in connection with a false burglary claim, according to the Kansas Department of Insurance.

Insurance Commissioner Vicki Schmidt announced Monday that 39-year-old Jinky Alcantara pleaded guilty in Johnson County District Court to one felony count of insurance fraud.

According to the department, Alcantara submitted false invoices to her insurance company as part of a burglary claim in an attempt to obtain money she was not entitled to receive.

Alcantara was sentenced July 16 to 24 months of supervised probation. She was also ordered to pay a $500 fine, along with court costs and fees.

“Every time someone commits insurance fraud, it causes families and businesses across Kansas to pay more,” Schmidt said in a statement. “The Department will continue to hold these individuals accountable.”

The Kansas Department of Insurance investigated the case, which was prosecuted by the Kansas Attorney General’s Office.

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Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach on Aug. 4 announced victory in a case where he argued firearms suppressors should not be required to be registered with the federal government.

Kobach, who characterized suppressors as protective hearing accessories, represented Kansas alongside 14 other states and a group of private plaintiffs to challenge the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). Specifically, the group commanded the ATF to stop enforcing registration, reporting and record keeping requirements that applied to suppressors and short-barreled rifles and shotguns.

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By Morgan Chilson

TOPEKA — Kansas is on course for its smallest winter wheat harvest since the 1950s, with a July report showing the state’s farmers are expected to produce almost half the number of bushels they did at the same time last year, an expert said.

A July 10 report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture projected 196 million bushels for the Kansas winter wheat harvest, down from nearly 347 million last year, said Dan O’Brien, agricultural economist and Kansas State University professor.

Nationally, winter wheat production is expected to be 471 million bushels, O’Brien said, compared with last year’s 804 million.

“Hard Red Winter (HRW) wheat, usually the largest class of U.S. production, is forecast to have its smallest crop since 1957/58,” the USDA report said of national expectations.

Kansas farmers were affected primarily by drought, and there were also freezes early in the season that damaged crops, a weather pattern that Nick Levendofsky, executive director of the Kansas Farmers Union, said he expects to see for a long time.

The harvest shortfall this year adds to the challenges farmers and ranchers have been facing. Kansas Farm Bureau reported that Chapter 12 bankruptcies filed nationally by farmers increased to 315 filings in 2025, a 46% increase from 2024. The Midwest and Southeast accounted for 121 of those, the farm agency said, noting “deep crop losses across commodities” in those two regions. Kansas is included among the Midwest states.

Levendofsky said bad years like this one, with weather challenges and input price increases, as well as geopolitical difficulties, are likely to affect whether farmers continue to farm or how they choose to do so.

“I think at the end of the day, it’s going to come down to their bottom line and what’s going to pay the most and what’s going to cost them the least to produce,” he said. “If that’s wheat, then that’s one thing. If it’s another crop, it’s another thing. It’s important for farmers to be diversified. But it’s proving to be more and more of a challenge to do that all the time.”

Some farmers may decide to park their tractors permanently.

“I think you’re probably going to see more older farmers make that decision, which is sad,” Levendofsky said.

Many farmers who lived through previous farm crises “don’t want to deal with it anymore,” he said.

“It takes a toll on you mentally. It takes a toll on you physically, financially. You name it,” he said.

It’s difficult to track all the factors currently pushing at farmers and ranchers.

A key driver in the market includes attacks in the Black Sea that are part of Russia’s  war with Ukraine, O’Brien said. Ukraine is expected to transport grain by rail shipments to Europe, rather than by sea, because of those attacks, he said.

The European Union also is suffering after dry weather, frost, storms and hail and has made “soft wheat forecasts,” O’Brien said.

The future remains uncertain for Kansas wheat farmers, O’Brien said.

“I think it’s challenging to see six months down the road when we’re uncertain of what’s happening today or tomorrow,” he said. “Within the last three months, we’ve had a lot of market volatilities — at first a run up that had to do some with geopolitical issues, but then weather was entering into that.”

The market has gone up and down, and the resulting decreased crop forecasts have given wheat farmers stronger prices than they’ve had in recent years, O’Brien said.

“But again, we don’t have as much quantity to sell at those rates,” he said. “The next major decision to be made by farmers will be a barometer of what we think about the wheat market and its prospects, and that will be how many acres farmers plant coming up in September/October.”

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Three people were arrested July 31st after two drug investigations in Emporia led to the seizure of more than a pound of methamphetamine, nearly 300 fentanyl pills, about 1,700 MDMA pills, commonly known as ecstasy, and more than $10,000 in suspected drug proceeds, according to the Emporia Police Department.

In the first case, police arrested 54-year-old Lance J. Harris of Emporia on suspicion of distributing methamphetamine, stimulants, marijuana and fentanyl, along with possession of methamphetamine, cocaine, marijuana and drug paraphernalia.

A second investigation resulted in the arrests of 42-year-old Daniel L. Jackson of Winfield and 51-year-old Melissa J. Dempsy of Emporia. Jackson faces allegations including distribution of methamphetamine, possessing drug paraphernalia with intent to distribute, unlawfully acquiring drug proceeds and using a communication facility to commit a felony drug offense. Dempsy was arrested on suspicion of distributing methamphetamine and possessing drug paraphernalia.

The Lyon County Attorney’s Office is reviewing the cases for formal charges. Police noted that all suspects are presumed innocent unless proven guilty in court.

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